I'm ready to be bolder (and my cuts have healed with time)
by imperfectandchaotic
Summary: Joan and Sherlock and immediate aftermaths. [Episode Tag to 2.21 "Paint It Black"]


**I'm ready to be bolder (and my cuts have healed with time)**

**Notes:** I have a lot of joanlock feels. and sherlock feels in general. My first Elementary fic, the first fic I've written in a while. Please be kind.

* * *

MI6. Of course.

"Where's Sherlock?"

Mycroft's otherwise calm expression falters and there is a pinch of panic even stronger than it had been moments ago, seconds away from death in a dark and seedy parking lot. "Mycroft," Joan says, trying not to flinch as another man in black cuts her zip tie bonds with a _snap._

"He's—"

But Mycroft doesn't get a chance to tell her exactly where his brother is (and why he's not here) because the familiar blare of NYPD sirens cuts through the night and the relief Joan feels at the sight of Marcus stepping out of his car is so palpable she can feel it in her throat.

"Joan!" She can see him assessing the situation even as he strides towards her: the bodies, the men in black, the distinct charge of a coordinated strike in the air. Detective Bell's hand is on his holster; he does not release it until he is touching her arm.

"You alright?"

She nods even though the motion is an utter lie. "How did you find me?" Joan tries to wait a beat before asking, but the question jumps out anyway. "Did Sherlock—"

_"Watson!"_

Whipping her head around hurts, but it's worth it to see Sherlock jumping out of who turns out to be Captain Gregson's car even as it skids to a stop. There are handcuffs dangling from one of his wrists (ask later, she tells herself) as Sherlock clears the distance between them in long, agitated strides.

"Sherlock—" Joan tries, but it's no use.

"Are you alright? Are you _alright?"_ he repeats when she can't answer right away, too distracted by his hands, sliding over her shoulders, down her arms, up her sides, checking for—well she doesn't know exactly what he's checking for, broken bones? signs of bruising?

"Sherlock—Sherlock!" Joan grabs at his hands with her own and forces him still. His eyes are wide and over-bright in the awful sallow light of the parking lot. She reads a lot of things there but focuses instead on how it feels, like Sherlock is a drowning man and she is the mast that is going to save him.

"I'm fine," she says slowly, as if drawing the syllables out will make it true. "I'm okay."

"You smell of alcohol," Sherlock blurts. His hands twitch in hers and Joan knows even without following his gaze down that he can see the tinges of blood she couldn't quite scrub away.

"Someone died." She has to swallow before she can say the rest. "I couldn't save him."

Sherlock's expression is..._stricken,_ and that is probably what will haunt her the most in the days to come. He is practically vibrating; there is a gauntness to his face that tells Joan he hasn't eaten or slept in days—guilt twists in her stomach.

"Let me take you guys home," Marcus says, and there is that hand on her arm again, gentle and steady and reassuring.

Sherlock doesn't get in the car when he beats her to it. He walks right past Mycroft while studiously ignoring him; Joan files that in the list of things to ask about, when they are home and the panic eases out of Sherlock's eyes. He exchanges nods with Captain Gregson across the roof and stands waiting as the gruff man takes his turn looking Joan in the eye and making sure for himself of her condition.

"Gave us a scare there, Miss Watson," he says. There is an unfamiliar fatherly warmth in his gaze that presses a knot in Joan's throat. "Don't come in for a few days, okay?"

She nods mutely and tries to smile, feeling the weight of that simple failure like something heavy in her chest.

"You're shaking," Marcus says as she gets in the car. Joan looks down at her hands in odd detachment; he's right of course. "Hang on, I got a blanket in the back."

Joan feels Sherlock's stare searing into the side of her head. But as she looks up to reassure him he is already getting out of the car, a familiar and frightening rage in the set of his jaw. Joan only has time to twist around in her seat to see Sherlock's swing.

Mycroft staggers backwards and his men swarm. Joan knows logically she should be angry, or upset, but she gives in to the part of herself that is pleased (hopefully now Sherlock won't break any plates tonight). It takes Captain Gregson five minutes to extract her partner, and another minute more to return to the car, his spine rigid.

Marcus just looks at Joan in the rearview mirror and starts the engine.

—

"Gregson had to handcuff him to the desk so he couldn't come," Marcus explains as Sherlock blows past them upon arrival at the brownstone. "Of course that didn't last long. Cap should've known better I guess, but he didn't want to risk another Moran."

The thought hadn't even occurred to Joan until right this moment; her spine goes cold. She looks up at the steps of her home and tries to breathe. When she looks back at Marcus, she is horrified to find guilt in his expression.

"I'm sorry," he says, before she can intercept. "I should have known—"

"You couldn't have," she protests. "And I'm fine. Really. A few days' sleep and I'll be good as new."

"And Holmes?" Joan looks up at the brownstone again.

"He will too. Eventually."

Marcus' gaze is dubious, but Joan is too tired to deal with whatever perception is making him doubt her. "Get some rest," he says after a pause and she is pleased to find that her grateful smile seems to actually make it onto her face.

"Goodnight."

Then she steps inside and Joan feels all that confidence fall away. Her footsteps feel heavy even as she walks past the living room, past Clyde's habitat, and into the kitchen where Sherlock stands over the kettle, handcuff free.

"It seems we're out of jasmine," he says with his back turned. That rigidity in his spine is still there; Joan advances with only a small amount of trepidation.

"That's okay."

But that's apparently the wrong thing to say, because Sherlock's hand slips and the mug he'd been holding lands on the counter with a thunk. Joan treads closer, until she's in arms' reach. She considers reaching out, sliding her hand over his shoulder maybe, it's hard to tell if she should touch him—

Until it isn't.

Joan blinks, but it doesn't rid her of the armfuls of Sherlock, who has all but collapsed into her, his fingers clutching faintly at her sides, his mouth moving over the bare skin of her neck.

"I'm sorry," he says. She can't move, she's afraid to breathe. Joan isn't even sure if he's really aware he's saying this out loud, if he's really apologizing to her or simply seeking absolution from the universe in the hollow of her throat. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"Sherlock…" It comes out like a whisper. Joan forces her fingers to move, sliding a hand up between his shoulder blades, into his hair. This is the most intimately they have touched, ever, and if the shock wasn't keeping her standing, she is sure her knees would buckle in the face of it.

She doesn't know if she should say anything, or even that there's anything to say. Joan is loathe to start Sherlock down a path of guilt or anger, not now when she's finally home and she can hear Romulus and Remus rustling faintly in the next room. So she just waits, acutely aware of how oddly soft Sherlock's hair is.

The kettle, blessedly, begins to whistle.

Sherlock springing backwards feels like an explosion.

"Ahem," he starts, rocking back on his heels. Sherlock brushes at his eyes with a sleeve and Joan pretends not to notice.

"Tea?"

"Sure," she replies quickly. "I'm gonna go...shower."

Joan has to force herself to leave the room at a normal pace—lest of course, things get weird.

—

When Joan has showered and brushed her teeth and stood in her room debating how much time is enough to return to something vaguely resembling normal, she pads back downstairs to find Sherlock with the promised tea. There is also the warm glow of a fire, and the sound of light rain drumming against the windows.

It would be any other almost-spring night in the brownstone, except for how it isn't.

"It would be remiss of me Watson," Sherlock says, looking first at the fire and then up at her, "to not ask if you wanted to speak about what happened to you."

Joan opens her mouth to say no, to say, I'm fine, to say, I don't need to talk about it, but as she draws her legs up beneath her on the couch and wraps her hands around her favourite mug, she can't bring herself to tell the lie.

Sherlock would give it to her of course, but the words start pouring out and she finds she can't stop them.

"He used chloroform to knock me out."

His gaze is intent, not unlike other expressions Sherlock has worn in their most serious conversations, but Joan can feel the undercurrent of _something_ in the room, that tells her they will never be free of this heaviness in the air unless she tells him the whole story.

"I tried kicking and screaming, but I knew logically that it was already working. He'd soaked it so much and his hand was huge…"

Joan describes waking up in that warehouse, the zip tie that rendered all of Sherlock's forced practice useless. And Jem.

"My French isn't that good anymore," she says, not sure why she's telling Sherlock this (of course he knows), but continuing anyway. "But he kept talking about church, and how he'd never studied the Bible, and he should have, shouldn't he? Like maybe it would have saved him?"

Joan looks up at Sherlock, who of course can offer her no answer. "I tried to get them to take him to a hospital, but they wouldn't listen. And then…" She has to swallow past a sudden lump in her throat. "Marchef shot him. After all that. Killed his own family."

There is a very long pause.

"I told Mycroft that I wished the cancer had rotted him to bones," Sherlock says, sounding ill as he says it, staring at a scuff in the floor.

Joan has no reply. He describes the hours they spent looking for that one house on the water from only four photographs. He tells her he called Mycroft a buffoon. She tells him that Marchef draped her coat over her like a blanket.

Sherlock glosses over details about the NSA and his final meetings with Captain Gregson and Detective Bell; he winces both times and Joan winces with him.

She'll have to remember to apologize to them again.

Joan tells Sherlock how his brother effectively ordered the execution of five men who fell all around her and feels bile rise in her throat. She thinks of the sallow parking lot light, of how she really thought she was going to die there on the concrete, of how she didn't really feel safe until Marcus' hand was on her arm, of how looking at her partner hurtling towards her felt like finally being home again.

Joan doesn't say any of those things.

She doesn't remember putting down her tea or even falling asleep, but Joan wakes to a blanket draped over her, one hand slipping off the couch—

and brushing Sherlock.

He's leaning against the couch not too far from her head; Joan can tell he's awake from the intense steadiness of his breathing and contemplates just closing her eyes again, knowing that when she reopens them, he will be gone.

_If anything ever happened to you, I'm not sure I could forgive myself._

Joan is too afraid to think about what he may have done.

They will go back to normal, at some point. But that point is not now, not with Sherlock leaning ever-so-slightly into the touch of her fingers and the smell of dying embers in the air.

So Joan slides her palm against the back of Sherlock's neck. She breathes. He leans into her hand, his breath still steady and slow and strong.

From across the house, Romulus and Remus stir.

From across the living room, Clyde begins his slow morning stretch.

Joan breathes.

Sherlock breathes.

The sun rises.

* * *

**More Notes: **Yes that is a _Sherlock _reference, what of it?

Give me my reunion scene or give me death.

Annie


End file.
